FBI: Brown gunman's attack fueled by lifetime grievances

The FBI announced that the suspected gunman behind the December mass shooting at Brown University, Claudio Neves Valente, spent years planning the attack, fueled by an accumulation of lifetime grievances.

Authorities stated that Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, entered an engineering building on the Ivy League campus on December 13 and fatally shot two students while injuring nine others. He later killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor at his home outside Boston on December 15.

Investigators determined that Neves Valente acted alone and that his victims were symbolic, representing his perceived personal failures and injustices. He had attended Brown University two decades ago with the MIT professor, having previously completed a physics program in Portugal. After withdrawing from Brown in 2001 and leaving the U.S., he later obtained lawful permanent residency in 2017.

In recorded statements made before his death, Neves Valente admitted to planning the attack, which began around 2022. The FBI's extensive probe, involving thousands of hours of surveillance footage and hundreds of interviews, indicated his actions were driven by an inflated sense of self, interpersonal conflicts, and a belief he was being treated unjustly, leading to increased paranoia and mental distress.